Love in Reality: A Contemporary Romance (The Blackjack Quartet) (23 page)

“Me too,” he breathed against her cheek. Then he was kissing her again. When he finally lifted his head, he put his finger to his lips. Her mike light was on again.

“Bye,” she mouthed. A quick touch of his lips, and she was gone.

* * *

Rand watched Lissa slip through the door, his body missing her a second before his mind did. He’d felt tense and jangly all day. He’d gotten some sleep, probably more than Lissa had, but X-rated dreams woke him up and made him hungry for her. Coming into work, he’d been thinking—plotting really—how he could get her out of the ’Bowl that night. His need to be with her alarmed him a little. It was a relief, in its way, when Debbie explained why they couldn’t pull it off again.

Time to think. This urge to walk onto the set and grab her in front of everyone—that’s what scared him. With the secrecy and limitations to their situation, Rand found it hard to get a handle on what was going on with Lissa. He had never felt like this about a woman, but then he’d never been in this situation.

Plus, he was still knee-deep in his screenplay and the underlying plan to hijack the ’Bowl. That was going well. He had tons of great dialogue for the script, and even a comedic sequence when Brad and Jenna escape
The Ant Farm
and risk getting pulled over by a patrol car. They talk their way out of it, but it lends a knife’s edge to their love scene. Brad, at least, wasn’t worried that he’d coerced a woman into his bed.

Oh, lord. When did his life get so complicated? Probably six months ago when the assignments were handed out and he was told to locate a Ditz. And now look where he was. He’d driven so far down this road with Lissa—had he ever thought this through?

He couldn’t remember where the turnoff had been—
Obsession with a Fish, Take this Exit
. It wasn’t just hormones. Lissa was a lovely girl, but this was L.A. There were lovely girls everywhere. They might be vacant and lacking personality, but the exterior was always very well tended.

What was it, then, about Lissa? Was it all this clandestine crap, the sneaking around and plotting against Marcy? He enjoyed thumbing his nose at authority. There were even parallels with some of his high school experiences, but he’d never felt about his on-again-off-again girlfriend in high school the way he felt with Lissa. That had been fumbling around in his dad’s home theater. This was—

Was that it? Was he recreating the sense he was pulling off a coup against his dad? Great sex with the fillip of secrecy? Or did he feel something for Lissa? Something more than sexual desire, something bigger?

Debbie, who’d been with Marcy from the beginning, once told him that not one of the hookups between cast members had ever gone the distance. When they did reunion shows, it was always the thing fans asked about—Was Tuck still dating Brianna? Did Stephani and Alex break up? So far, no one dated for more than about a week after taping ended. In effect, these were workplace flings. As soon as a couple left the ’Bowl and resumed their real lives, the relationship spluttered and died.

Of course, those were people playing a game. He wasn’t playing Lissa to win a million dollars and she wasn’t gaming him. Still, the entire basis of their relationship was artificial. At the end of the summer, Lissa Pembroke was going back to Philadelphia. No matter how wonderful their time together was, she would probably forget about him. She had family, a job, and friends waiting for her.

Whereas he would have a screenplay that would suggest—quite convincingly—that he’d used her to generate material for his film. If he succeeded in selling the script, Lissa would despise him. And if he didn’t sell the script, he’d be out of work with nothing to show for it.

If that wasn’t a damned depressing analysis, he thought as he packed up to leave, he didn’t know what was.

Life in the Fishbowl cycled between sleepy and frantic. More so for the Fish still fighting for the money, but Libby felt it too. Competition days were busy and stressful, and the live show—where someone was fished out and someone else was named the Shark for the week—was particularly manic, but that still left a lot of unstructured time.

During those long stretches of boredom, Libby struggled to find a subtle way of appearing busy while actually not participating in the three group activities open to her: gossiping with her fellow Fish, politicking in the Shark Tank, or gossiping about another Fish’s politicking. Every morning, Libby avoided these activities in favor of exercise, but there was just so much time she could spend on the weight machines.

During Greg’s time as the Shark, Libby couldn’t even cook, because she was on Fish Food for the week. The losers weren’t allowed near real food. The Fish who’d won the food fight probably wouldn’t complain if Libby whipped something up then didn’t eat it herself, but it might look like she was trying to cheat. The voice on the PA system would probably tell her to put down the whisk and step away from the scrambled eggs before someone got hurt.

While Greg, Kai, Dylan and Susie were lingering over their “people food” lunches, Libby kicked around the garden. She’d settle by the pool, then get bored and go over to the hammock.

What was Rand doing?

Libby adjusted the halter top of one of Lissa’s bikinis. She had to admit she’d put it on more for Rand’s benefit than for Jim or Chris. She checked out her reflection in the mirrored windows. At least the exercise was paying off. She had an okay figure in real life but in Los Angeles that was like saying a three-speed bike was good enough for the Tour de France.

Rand didn’t seem to mind her body, though, she recalled with a wicked little smile.

After slathering herself with sunblock, Libby spread out on a towel and let her mind float. Was Rand having—not second thoughts maybe, but concerns? Looking at it pragmatically, what could Libby do if he decided to end their fling? Easy for Rand to dump her—just not talk to her again. It wasn’t like she could chase him.

She smiled into the towel, waving her legs in the air.

He couldn’t be thinking of dumping her, not with this thing between them. He may have been putting the brakes on last night, but that wasn’t the final move in the game. Kind of a powerful feeling—Libby wondered if this was how Lissa felt with that succession of guys in high school and college, who’d all wanted her with single-minded fervor. Libby hadn’t been hard up for dates, but very few guys interested her enough to get excited about them. Her books and papers had made her happier than preparing for a date.

Not Rand, though. It wasn’t just that there was precious little to do in here other than compete and daydream about him. If they’d met in real life, he would still have distracted her from the most compelling schoolwork.

She was fairly sure she distracted him. Lissa always said it was clear when a man was interested—Libby now understood how that could be true. Rand’s face lit up when she smiled at him, he couldn’t keep his hands or mouth off her, and he’d certainly gone to extraordinary lengths to smuggle her into a hotel room. He’d put his job on the line. For her.

Lissa had been right: when a man wants you, he isn’t subtle about it.

* * *

Rand suffered through another Sunday brunch with his parents, then left as soon as he decently could, using the tired excuse that he had to go to work. The weight of his father’s disapproval lessened with every mile Rand put between the Bel Air house and the studio. Rand had lied about work, but he didn’t have anything better to do. And maybe he’d get to see Lissa.

Even though neither of them were scheduled to work that day, Rand wasn’t surprised to see Debbie at her desk.

“What are you working on?” he asked.

“Tuesday’s Get Off The Hook script,” she said absently.

“Funny, that looked like a computer game to me,” he teased.

“Screw you,” she replied with a smile. “Oh, that’s right, that’s taken care of. Didn’t see you yesterday—how did the big date go?”

Rand checked the room. They were alone. “Very nice, thank you.”

“Details? Not the kissy-kissy part, but you know—the talky-talky part.”

“Well, you know what she’s like uh, here?” Probably not a good idea to refer to Lissa as a Fish, just in case.

“Hmm. Quiet, watchful, deceptively simple. Got it.” Debbie grinned at him.

“Much less so away from here,” he grinned back. “And that’s all I can say.”

“Aw, c’mon, you’re no fun.”

“That’s not what she said,” he joked. He grabbed his laptop and started for the door.

“You still owe me.” Debbie’s singsong voice followed him down the hall.

One bank of windows overlooking the garden ran along a hallway sufficiently wide for a camera dolly, even though the dolly system rarely got used. As a consequence, there was about eight feet of floor space for the length of the garden windows. Someone had parked a couple of crates along the interior wall and Rand adopted these as his pro tem office. It allowed him a good view of the garden, but the main flow of the crew tended to miss him. Marcy rarely bothered to go looking for anyone. She just texted her impatience and expected her staff to materialize instantly. Until he was summoned, Rand could enjoy relative peace and quiet. And watch for Lissa.

He’d plugged in his computer and hoisted himself up on the crate—conveniently still covered with a padded mover’s quilt—before he looked out the windows. He knew from the Control Room monitors that Lissa wasn’t in the Shark Tank and he hadn’t seen her in the other common spaces. Now he knew why. She was alone, stretched out on a towel. What was more, she was as good as naked. He nearly dropped his laptop.

Most of the contestants pranced around virtually nude. His friends found it titillating, but the reality was more annoying than erotic. By the time the female Fish stripped down to ever-tinier bikinis each season, everyone on the production side knew more than enough about their personalities to counteract the displays of flesh. Lissa had been an exception. As far as Rand knew, today was the first day she’d even bothered to wear a bikini. She had a couple of one-piece swimsuits but mostly she was in shorts and a skimpy T-shirt, which Rand had found sexy next to the Vixen’s and Cougar’s if-you’ve-got-it-flaunt-it attitude.

Rand stared at Lissa, vaguely guilty at how voyeuristic this felt. Just then she rolled over onto her back. Oh, lord, that was worse. He remembered her straddling him two nights ago. How could hooking up with her be wrong? No way he was cooling things down when she looked like that. Rand got lost in thoughts about what they had done together, and what they hadn’t had time to do.

He shook his head. He was kidding himself if he thought he could pull back now. No matter what, if Lissa was still willing, he was in.

In. Inside her. Rand groaned. He needed to find another place to work. With her looking like that, there was no way he’d get anything done.

* * *

That night, when Rand told Lissa he was organizing a “Fish heist” for later, she just grinned.

“I bet I can guess,” she said, tucked in his arms in the Journal Room’s control area. “It was the bikini, wasn’t it?”

They should have cast her as the Vixen.

Rand grinned. “You admit you wore that on purpose?”

“As opposed to telling you some story about how it was the only clean clothing I had? Yes, I put it on deliberately.”

“You are evil,” he growled before kissing her. It was harder than usual to keep track of the control board, when what he really wanted to do was strip off all her clothes, or at least start kissing all the skin he could find.

“It’s the game,” she told him when he finally let her talk again. “It brings out all my competitive tendencies.”

“If you were competing for my attention, you won. Hands down. I had to find another place to work.”

She smiled that knowing smile. “I’m a very competitive person.”

“Funny, because what everyone says is that you’re playing the deepest game they’ve ever seen. No alliances, not even with Kai, no deals, no promises about who you’ll vote to be fished out—nothing. What’s that about?”

She laughed. “It helps not to want to win the game. Even if I make it to the final two, I’d lose. All the Fish in the Holding Tank would pick the other guy because I’ve played such a bad game. Most of them think I’ve just been dumb and lucky.”

This startled Rand. “Not dumb, surely. They have to see how clever you’re being.”

She cocked her head a little. “I’m not sure they’re thinking it through that carefully. They only know how to play in a showy manner. My agenda wouldn’t make sense to them.”

“They’d want to know why you’re here if you don’t want to win,” he said slowly. “So why are you here?”

There was a glimmer in her eyes, sadness or disappointment maybe, but it disappeared immediately and her smile was serene. “I’m here to stalk you, of course.”

He laughed. “Considering you’re not even supposed to see me, it would seem to be a flawed strategy for stalking.”

“And yet, here we are,” she said, gesturing at the two of them. “I’d say it’s working pretty well.”

That impertinence deserved more kisses. Now that he knew what she felt like naked, kissing and touching her without getting horizontal was painfully sexy. Every part of his body vibrated with desire, straining to move things along. His skin was hypersensitive, even to the point of finding the fabric of his own clothes erotic. Like those silk boxers he’d pulled on without thinking about it. They felt amazing now, soft and frictionless as he pressed against Lissa’s belly.

Finally, desperately, he pushed her away. She looked as disheveled as he felt, her eyes nearly closed with desire.

“Later. I’ll come get you later.”

That perked her up. She took some deep breaths. “About that. I had an idea. What do you guys do if a contestant gets sick?”

“Call a doctor,” he said. “Why?”

“Well, if I claimed the Fish Food was making me ill and took myself to bed, someone would have to check on me, right?”

“Right. We’d bring you in here,” he said slowly.

“Until the doctor came. But you don’t actually want a doctor. You just want to swap the animatronic doll for me, and tell the other Fish I’m sick. Shut the door and it’s done. That way you can get me out sooner and with less bother. What do you think?”